AIDS researchers say condom use higher among teens but infection still a threat

View full sizeLawrence Stallworth II, 20, of Cleveland, Ohio, who was diagnosed with HIV at age 17, speaks on a youth panel at the International AIDS Conference in Washington on Sunday. Stallworth learned he was infected with HIV at age 17 as a high-school senior. A black gay man, he's among one of the nation's highest-risk groups. He's now an Ohio AIDS activist who works to teach young people they need to protect themselves. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON —
Nearly half of high school students say they've had sex, yet progress
has stalled in getting them to use condoms to protect against the AIDS
virus, government researchers reported Tuesday.

Today, four of
every 10 new HIV infections occur in people younger than 30, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and the teen years,
just as many youths become sexually active, are key for getting across
the safe-sex message.

Using a long-standing survey of high school
students' health, the CDC tracked how teen sexual behavior has changed
over 20 years. The results are decidedly mixed.

About 60 percent
of sexually active high school students say they used condoms the last
time they had sex, researchers said at the International AIDS
Conference. That's an increase from the 46 percent who were using
condoms in 1991.

"This is good news," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of CDC's HIV prevention center. But, "we need to do a lot more."

Condom use reached a high of 63 percent back in 2003.

Black
students are most likely to heed the safe-sex message, yet their condom
use dropped from a high of 70 percent in 1999 to 65 percent last year,
the study found.

The proportion of high school students who've had
sex is 47 percent today — down a bit from 54 percent in 1991 — and they
typically start at age 16, CDC said. Black teens showed a bigger
decrease, with 60 percent sexually active today compared with 82 percent
two decades ago.

The more partners, the more risk. Fifteen
percent of high school students say they've had four or more partners,
down from 19 percent in 1991.

Fenton said many school systems
don't have strong enough sex education policies that include teaching
teens about how to prevent HIV. But he cautioned that the CDC study
can't link the abstinence-only policies pushed by Congress through the
late 1990s and early 2000s to the stalled condom use.

Focusing on
individual risk behaviors is just part of the story. Increasingly, HIV
is an infection of the poor, and specialists at the world's largest AIDS
meeting are making the point all week that tackling the virus globally
will require broader efforts to address problems of poverty. Those
include gaining better access to overall health services and fighting
stigma.

In hard-hit Africa, where 60 percent of infections are
among women, U.S. researchers announced a new step to develop tools
women can use to protect themselves when their partners won't use
condoms. A new study will test a monthly vaginal ring that oozes an
anti-AIDS drug into the surrounding tissue in hopes of blocking HIV. The
study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will enroll nearly
3,500 women in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In
the U.S., where new infections have stubbornly held at about 50,000 a
year for a decade, complacency is part of the problem, Fenton said. "We have to generate a new sense of urgency," he said.